Letting the big poisson off the hook

As far as I know, I have one thing (and I hope it’s just one) in common with General Gaddafi, Jean-Marie Le Pen and Dominique Strauss-Kahn – I’ve been invited to speak at the Cambridge Union.

My visit a couple of years ago was a lot less controversial than DSK’s yesterday. There were no protesters reminding me of the time when I mistreated an American chambermaid by not leaving a tip – though there should have been, because I still feel a bit mean about it. I was even able to go out unmolested for dinner with a few of the Union members afterwards, and a fine, intelligent bunch they were, too (and this is an Oxford graduate talking).

Though there was one way in which my visit was much more controversial than DSK’s. There were, I seem to remember, a few provocative questions during my talk. For example – didn’t I think that the hero of my novels, Paul West, overdid clichés about Paris by talking so much about sex? (Answer: well, in A Year in the Merde he sleeps with four women in nine months, and he’s 27 and single and living in a new city. And btw I recently got an email from a 64-year-old Paris expat who felt the need to inform me that he’s slept with two Parisiennes so far this year.)

But from what I’ve read, only one Cambridge Union member asked DSK a question about the unproven allegation that he raped a chambermaid, and was almost thrown out of the hall for doing so. OK, DASK was invited to talk about the global economy, but surely the key question to ask him about the economy is this: as head of the IMF, did you really think it was a good idea to go up to New York and endanger your own, and the IMF’s, reputation by having hurried, unprotected sex with a hotel chambermaid?

And before anyone says “but he was cleared!”, remember that one of his lawyers’ first lines of defence was that the sex was consensual. He (or his lawyers) did not deny that there was a “brief” sexual encounter. And pourquoi pas, in a free world? She walks in the room, catches sight of his muscular, naked body and thinks “yes, I want you now.” It happens all the time to us middle-aged men.

It’s a shame that none of the Union members dared to ask the question, because they might have got an interesting answer. Is it going too far to imagine that he was in fact trying out a new, radical solution to the world’s economic problems – if every hotel guest had sex with their chambermaid (or their room-service waiter, to even up the gender balance), they would feel honour-bound to give a big tip. This would be a voluntary tax, filtering money down from the better-off to the less privileged. The cash would be spent in local businesses, rebooting the global economy from the grass-roots up. It is what you might call thinking outside the box (unless you wanted to be very vulgar and make a pun about box’s second, obscene meaning, which I don’t).

If that wasn’t what he was doing, then I don’t know why the Union invited him to talk about the economy, because it doesn’t seem to be his first priority in life. And sorry to harp on about it, but come on, Union members, can’t you be a bit more mischievous than that with your guests? Or why not allow questions from the general public? It looked as though there were lots of people outside the debating chamber who wanted to liven things up a bit. After all, your university was the birthplace of British satire.

But if giving controversial guests a free ride is a new Cambridge Union policy, please let me know when you invite Silvio Berlusconi, because I’m keen to hear his lecture on anti-aging techniques.